


The Man in the Dark

by Chiauve



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Gen, I can't write children, Implied/Referenced Torture, Shenanigans, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22380628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiauve/pseuds/Chiauve
Summary: Ally was told to not go down to the abandoned labs underneath the repurposed BSAA building in which her father worked, so of course that was the first thing she did. During her explorations she finds something, or someone, who was meant to be long dead and forgotten.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 25





	1. Rituals of Descent for a Little Adventurer

Ally had been told emphatically by her father that she was not allowed to go down into the abandoned labs below the building. They’d been converted to storage units when the building was repurposed for records and bookkeeping and all that boring stuff of the BSAA so there was nothing of interest down there but it was still dangerous anyway. So of course that was the first thing she did.

Both her parents worked long hours and neither wanted their eight-year-old daughter home alone after school, and Ally had no close enough friends with which to spend those hours. Most of those days she spent with her grandparents, especially her doting grandfather, but they too were still involved in the work life and would sometimes be away. So her father would pick her up and bring her to his office building. It was a decent compromise; a little more time with her dad, somewhat, and, supposedly, time to sit down and get her homework and reading done. She could wander as she pleased, grab a snack from the cafeteria, and hole up somewhere quiet to focus.

Or that’s what she said. She’d give her dad a kiss on the cheek and, backpack over her shoulder, head for the less used hallways and then make a beeline for the stairway. The elevator did go to the basement levels but they required a key to go down and she didn’t want anyone to happen to see where the car was going anyway, just in case.The stairway, however, and the door to the first of the basement levels were unlocked. Either no one noticed or didn’t care. Judging by the occasional cigarette and other things she’d found on that first level she guessed the latter. Even adults needed their getaways and for that reason she’d learned to be sneaky coming and going and had perused those first couple of rooms of the first level quickly.

As she was told, there was little. Boxes of old books and hard copies of records, spare furniture, some unused safes, the fans that would get hauled out in summertime and space heaters in winter, and so on. Boring office stuff.

The building had once been one of the BSAA’s research and training facilities, but with the decrease of bio-terrorism and BOW activity over the years those departments of the BSAA had been downsized and relocated. The BSAA still had a heavy hand in monitoring pharmaceutical activities and viral research, its original purpose, but there hadn’t been an outbreak in a long time so its focus was in the usual business and government dealings and other red tape stuff. The other kids used to perk up when she said her dad worked for the BSAA, asking if he fought monsters or traveled the world, and then would lose interest when she informed them he just had a desk job.

Ally crouched down by the door to the basement and listened for a long minute. No scuffling of feet, no voices, no weird slaps and grunts of people being gross, so she opened the door and slid into the dark. She knew the layout almost by heart now and hurried to where she could turn her light on without being seen should someone come in, but more importantly she hurried because she hated the dark. She really did. The stories her grandpa used to tell her were burned like brands into her mind and despite knowing full well no lickers or hunters or other extinct things were going to grab her she wanted to be able to see to be sure.

She counted steps and she jogged down a hallways and turned into the third room where she turned on her phone light and sat in a spare chair, spinning it around to assure herself there were no monsters.

The monsters were all gone. People like her daddy kept track of that and the brave BSAA agents made sure of it.

Still, some shadows made her shudder.

She dug into her backpack and pulled out a large flashlight, trading its broad, warm light from her phone’s colder one. A big flashlight said ‘explorer’ more than a phone ever could, but she kept her phone handy should she find something interesting to film and show her classmates later.

Poking her head back out into the hall for a last check, she hurried to the basement stairs. The second basement level was accessible from there and had a few more interesting things: old lockers, a few safes still locked and functioning, bathrooms and showers that still worked, obsolete computers long wiped, and more old furniture and boxes of records that nobody needed anymore and would someday probably just be burned.

She crossed this level to get to another set of stairs that led down to what she dramatically referred to as The Dead Zone. Whatever power there’d been down there was long shut off, pipes silent, and the only movement that of rats.

She hated rats. Not the cute, fat little things that sat on your shoulder in school, but the nasty wild ones that bit and probably carried The Plague. She always wore her boots on days she knew she was coming to her dad’s work.

The last of the power on the second level stopped at the door at the bottom of the stairs to the lower levels, keeping that door locked behind a large deadbolt. Or it was supposed to; the lock had been broken for a long time and no one came down to check it.

Discovering that had been the moment Ally went from childish scrounging through forgotten storage rooms to exploring the Unknown. A lone agent in the oppressive, silent dark. She’d been down there many times and it scared her every time.

She approached the door and paid respect to that dark, shutting off her flashlight and staring at that pinpoint of light on the lock; the last sign of life and civilization. She pushed open the door and slid inside and didn’t turn her light back on until the door clicked shut behind her. She double-checked her phone; the signal was weak but still there should she get locked in or something happened. She’d get in trouble, but knowing she could call for help kept her fear at bay. She shushed her shadow (only quiet in the Dead Zone) and then moved on.

She’d explored most of this floor already. As far as she could tell there were two more below, but it was harder and harder to get to them. The space got heavy the farther down she went; the dust thick and the dark itself pressing down, insulted at the presence of a little girl. She concluded that as long as she was a polite guest it wouldn’t really harm her.

There was a big open space she guessed was once a gym, or some kind of training area. A few mats were left and started to rot long ago. There were rooms she couldn’t get into, physically locked and requiring a key or the power locks dead. Some doors still had plaques labeling their purposes: offices, training rooms, records. The bathrooms didn’t work and no water flowed, save a corner where it crept down the wall into a moldy puddle.

The next floor was worse: labs with some remaining equipment that made her mind jump to horror video games. Ally managed to wedge her way into a partially blocked door into an operating theater, but only the observatory part. The doors to the room below were well sealed.

Shining her light down into that room made it some how creepier than normal, and so she filmed it for her adventure videos and then never went back.

Her heartbeat always increased at this point, the rats skittering around just outside her light. She could see their red eyes watching her.

There was one last set of doors to the floor below, and while she’d opened them and looked into that level something chilled her and she decided to keep looking around on the fourth floor. She passed her light over that door and considered: was the day the day she go below? Should she wait?

What time was it? She checked her phone: she still had time, but her signal was getting dangerously weak. She eyed the door, then decided to be the polite guest she was supposed to be and ask.

“Should I go down today?” she whispered, so low her voice was barely more than a breath. It still roared n her ears in the silence.

Nothing moved, there was no sound, and yet the oppressiveness seemed to ease just slightly, her heartbeat not as fast. She took that as an invitation and stepped forward.

“Thank you, that’s very kind,” she whispered to the dark. She was old enough now to know she was probably being silly but you never could be sure in dark creepy places and it was best just to be cautious.

She pushed open the dead door and descended the staircase back around to the last door. The air was so heavy and stale she was sweating, the temperature forever constant. She pushed open the last guardian and entered the heart of the darkness at the bottom of it all, her flashlight shining around the dank hallway. This was the farthest she’d ever gone, gazing upon this last floor but never entering. Her fear rose, but also a bit of disappointment. Once she explored this place, what was left? Oh she always scrounged around the other floors, always finding new things, but this was the Final. The Boss level, the…

She took a breath, rechecked the door to make sure it wouldn’t lock behind her, and then gently shut it.

The hallways had many doors indented against large rooms that made shadows that shifted and jumped out at her. The doors were huge, thick slabs that moved on a track, now dead. The first room was open, nothing but a big space beyond, though chains lay on the floor. What was this place? Training up above, labs below, and now… She pulled out her phone and filmed, scanning around the room. She used to narrate her progress on the upper levels, but here she stayed silent. She could edit it later.

The next room was the same, and so were the others. Big empty rooms with nothing in them, infested with rat droppings and bugs and other things, but otherwise silent and dead. The other floors had remnants of human life in them, which was creepy, but this had something else. Nothing. There were rooms but they were dead spaces, a large hall of big empty locked rooms.

Like a prison. Ally shuddered.

Deciding she’d done enough for today, she began to make her way back down the hall when something caught her eye. A light. A small, red pinpoint of light in the pressing, endless dark. She stared at it.

There was no power down here, how was this door still active? She shone her light on the source; a keypad, just as dusty and grimy as everything else, but still active. Hand trembling, she took a couple pictures with her phone, then, slowly, her finger inched towards a button.

She reared back and stepped away.

Not today. She was not ready for the dark’s secrets today.

She hurried back to the last door and ascended, crossed the abandoned levels and finally up to the broken door on the second basement level. Again she performed her ritual, shutting off her flashlight and curtsying to the dark, before she left and fled through the storage rooms and back upstairs.

Life, light, noise even in the quiet places. She settled herself into a corner with her schoolbooks and pretended she’d been there the whole time and pulled out a pencil.

Ally didn’t do her homework, her mind locked on that single little light in the heart of the darkness.


	2. Behind a Single Red Light

“That’s enough TV for today,” Ally’s mother said, glaring down at her daughter the couch potato.

“But it’s a new season,” Ally argued, but at another look from her mom she paused her program and exited to the home screen before the remote was straight up taken from her and she lost her place.

Her mom had that look.

“I got a call from your teacher this afternoon. She says you haven’t been turning in your homework.”

Because she hadn’t been doing it, but Ally knew better than to say that. She also knew better than to argue that it was _boring_ because adults didn’t care that it was boring just that it was _important_ and had to be done. Instead of denying it or arguing Ally just gave a shamefaced pout.

Her mother sighed. “Alright then, until your grades are back up, no more TV and from now on I’m taking your phone and tablet after dinner. You can have them back in the morning before school.”

That got her attention. Ally spun around on the couch, facing her mother with large, beseeching eyes. “But I need my tablet if I’m gonna do homework!”

“You can use the family computer so you don’t get distracted.”

“But—“

“That’s final, Ally. You don’t need to be chatting with your friends or making videos that late anyway.”

Ally slumped back down into the couch, arms crossed and almost ready to throw a tantrum if she wasn’t aware she was too old for that. Spending her night hours stuck at her homework was a fate worse than death. Unless she could fake getting it done first…

“It’s easier to do my homework at Dad’s work. Can I go there after school instead? Until I do better?”

Her mother eyed her a minute and then shrugged. “All right. I’ll ask your Dad if he’s okay with that.”

“So I can keep my tablet tonight?”

“Fine, we’ll see how things go, but no more TV tonight.”

“Yes, mom.”

* * *

Back in her room, the door safely shut, Ally flipped through the photos of her recent foray into the basement levels on her tablet, mostly the ones from the bottom-most level. The large, empty room was intriguing in its emptiness; there were slats in the floor for something, and large chains lay discarded. It sent shivers down her spine looking at them even in the comfort of her bed.

Finally she reached the pictures of the keypad with its single little red light. Why was it still active? The entire floor was dead, even the water pipes and air cut off.

What was in there?

While some things remained on the lowest floors, they were items that could be replaced or that were no longer needed. Anything still of value was locked up on the second basement level, everything else below left to be forgotten.

There was probably nothing in that room at all, something was just left on by accident. Like the broken doors.

Or there was something really important in there. Or really scary.

She peered at the photo of the keypad closely, zooming in on the numbers. Some were darker than others, possibly pressed more? But even if she got the combination right, would the door even open? It had been sealed for years now, it could be stuck.

Well she wouldn’t know until she checked it, and she had every intent to try tomorrow. While she still managed to hold onto her bravery.

* * *

At the BSAA office building, Ally went to her supposed study space first, waiting until people coming and going settled in for the last few hours of work. When things got quieter she picked up and went straight to the basement, creeping onto the first level and then hurrying through each subsequent one, still remembering her rituals of Descent, until she reached the Last Door.

Ally paused in the doorway, faced with that dank, silent hall.

There was something down there. Something locked away.

Her fear crept in. She’d seen enough movies and heard enough stories in her life to know that things that were buried were never supposed to be unburied and when they were only bad things happened. Her fear begged her to go back upstairs, to stay away from this horrible prison.

But Ally took a step forward. And then another. She came from a line of BSAA folk, whether they were tied to a desk or not, and would not back down. She walked to the end where that tiny little red light blazed in this black place. She shone her light on the keypad.

There were numbers and the largest button on the bottom still had the O for ‘open’ visible. Skipping the numbers, she pressed that. Her finger sunk into a layer of grime and she couldn’t tell if the button actually pressed but she listened.

Nothing. She pressed it again, hard. Still nothing. Frowning, Ally began to run through combinations of the darkened numbers, over and over. She’d gone through so many when she began to fear she’d need a keycard as well, and that whatever was here was going to stay hidden forever.

The light turned green and there was a heavy, slow clunk and a release of hydraulics. The door shrieked and then only moved an inch before it got stuck on the track. There was a shivering noise from within that made the hair on Ally’s arms stand on end. She grabbed the door and shoved and was hit in the face with a blast of foul, fetid air rank with rot and she staggered back and gagged. Her lunch crawled up her throat and much as it revolted her she decided to let it go and turned and puked in a corner.

_Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope nope…_

She never smelled anything that awful and disgusting in her life. The closest she ever smelled was when a squirrel had fallen down their chimney and died on the shut flue and they didn’t know until it started to rot and the smell got in the house.

Something _died_ in that locked room, was still dying.

Tears rolled down her face and she cried, spitting the taste of sick out of her mouth. She wanted to run; she did her job as an explorer and found something she shouldn’t have. Good enough, get back above, _now_.

She spat again and then froze.

There was that shivering noise again.

Something was moving in there, a lot of something.

She had to know.

Taking a deep breath of stale air that now seemed fresh in comparison to _that_ , Ally pulled the collar of her shirt up over her nose and crept to the door again, her light dancing around erratically as her hand shook. She shoved the door hard and it reluctantly moved along the track, a few inches at a time. She could finally enter and slid the flashlight beam around the room.

Hundreds of red eyes stared back at her. A large pile of rats hunkered in the middle of the room and shrieked at her as her light struck them before they fled, scattering all ways and vanishing back into the dark. Ally yelped and backed out, making sure the rats weren’t following, and then slowly crept in again.

There was still something on the floor, a pile of black and red and brown that wasn’t rats. It wasn’t moving at all.

The smell was so terrible Ally had to step back out in the hall again, gasping and gagging. When she re-entered the red eyes of the rats were back, watching her. She shone her light at them and they disappeared. She took a slow couple of steps towards the pile in the room and her unease began to grow further.

Whatever it was, it was chained down. Enormous chains as thick as her arms criss-crossed several times over the form, the links vanishing into slats on the floor. It was lying in a puddle of red, thick and dried with rat droppings.

It was wet.

She froze and stared in horror. Open wounds were weeping blood and clear fluids slowly, some exposing the white of bone. What might have once been clothes were shredded to near nothing, bared skin so filthy and infected it was discolored.

It was breathing. Or at least it looked like it was breathing. No, it was her shaking light, playing tricks on her. Had to be. She’d been exploring these dark places long enough to know that’s what the dark did. It was a trickster and liked to play, to confuse.

Against her better judgment, she took another step, her light on the bloody pile on the floor. Her free hand raised her phone for a picture, and the flash went off.

It was slight but unmistakable this time. One end of the pile moved, a swatch of matted, filthy hair shifted and Ally was met with a single eye. It was red and reptilian and, locking onto her, began to glow.

The pile moved now, tensed against the chains, and then there was a clacking and a hefty clunk as the chains were pulled down with sharp force from below, several links pulled into the slats in the floor, forcing the pile, the thing, back down violently. The head, for it was unmistakable that’s what it was now, threw back and a blackened mouth opened in a pain-filled scream, but there was no sound. A rush of air and bubbling blood and remnants of dead flesh splattered the floor in front of its trapped face.

Ally screamed in its stead and ran, nearly slipping on the grime. She grabbed the door and forced it shut, putting as much between her and that awful rotting thing as she could, and then she ran and didn’t stop running until she reached the light of the main floor, until she reached a bathroom. She locked herself in a stall and threw up again, though nothing came up but she kept trying, trying to purge the smell, the rot, the terror from her body.

Ally sat on the floor and scoot into the corner, clutching her backpack and started sobbing.

She should have known better. She should have.

What was that horrible _thing_?

She wanted nothing more than to run to her father and beg him to take her home. She’d never explore down below again, honest! Just make whatever that was go away!

But she was too scared to move, too horrified, and after long minutes of crying adrenaline leaked out of her and left her exhausted on the bathroom floor, hiccuping.

She finally got up and left the stall, staring at herself in the mirror. She splashed cold water on her face to try to get rid of the puffiness.

In a strange, relaxed daze, Ally wandered back to her usual place to do homework and sat down. She didn’t even pretend to work, but stared at the shoddy picture on her phone.

The flash lit the pile well enough, but the picture was blurred from shaking. Still, she could make out the form now. There was a head, the large hunch in the pile were shoulders, it tapered down to hips and then legs. A man-like figure, chained down on its side in a puddle of filth.

Ally hands gripped her phone tightly, the very image making her shake not only from her experience but from the horrible stories her grandpa used to tell her.

There was a BOW down there, a trapped zombie forgotten in the basement when all else had been cleared out.

She wouldn’t run to her dad, not yet. She wasn’t a little kid. And she didn’t want to surrender her explorer title just yet. This was still a mystery. She’d solve it first, and then be a good girl and tell her dad there was a monster down below. 

She took a long, deep breath, and reminded herself to dig out her old bat from the closet for next time.


	3. The Monster That Brought Tears

The baseball bat was designed for a small child, hardly effective against monsters but it made Ally feel better to have something. The monster was chained down anyway and if she needed to brain it she’d have the chance to make this silly bat useful.

The light on the keypad was red again, the system locked, but she didn’t completely seal the door last time so all she had to do was push it open. She was prepared this time. Aside from the bat she’d wrapped a heavy cloth she’d sprayed with her mom’s perfume around her mouth and nose as stench protection. It didn’t really help.

Ally scanned the room with her fashlight beam, chasing away the swarm of rats congregated on and around the BOW chained to the floor. What were they even doing? The zombie itself didn’t move, but she could hear it breathing from wilted, wet lungs.

She approached slowly and regarded the trapped BOW, her light reflecting here and there in pinpoints on wet flesh and guts. The wounds were fresh, not rot where skin would fall away over time, with small punctures and scratches all around them. Then she knew.

The rats were _eating_ it.

This wasn’t a zombie, this was a BOW being eaten alive.

Ally shivered. Monster or not, nothing deserved that. But that just left yet another question: how long had it been down here?

Pulling out her phone, she panned the camera down the body after the flashlight beam, recording the BOW from a safe distance to look up its type later. If it was a very dangerous kind and hadn’t been here long, then she needed to accept her fate and tell her dad right away. Checking her video, she found that while serviceable it was too dim, so snapped a couple of pictures with the flash.

The BOW twitched, a leg spasming under the chain making it rattle just slightly. Both she and the monster froze.

“H…hell-o…?” Ally whispered before realizing how stupid she was being.

A red eye opened and stared at her from beneath matted, dark hair, and then lit to fiery brilliance even under her light. Blackened teeth bared, the BOW snarled, though nothing more than rattling gasps emerged. Its whole body spasmed in a pathetic lunge and the chains creaked only slightly before that loud clunk and clatter was heard from below and the chains snapped down, crushing the BOW against the floor even tighter.

Ally gasped and stepped back, her body taut with the need to run but, somehow, she kept her feet planted. Still she raised her arms as though to ward off an attack, the light beam flashing across the wall and ceiling of the cell.

Because that’s what this was. A cell. This floor was a prison; a prison for monsters and this one was still here. She drew her bat.

The BOW tried to thrash, tried to cry out but could only gasp and spit blood. Thundering came from below and the chains snapped down again. Ally heard bones cracking.

“Stop! Stop it!” she cried out in horror.

The BOW gave one last kick, one last rattling, empty wail, and then lay still, spent. She could hear it panting, short and desperate, but it didn’t move again.

Ally was shaking all over and could feel the hot tears running down her face.

She was scared, she was scared of the dark and this monster, but this was too cruel.

Her grip on the bat tightened. She recalled some years ago playing outside with the neighborhood kids. There was a butterfly with a lost wing, and one of the older kids ceremoniously put it on a big rock and then smashed it. Putting it out of its misery, he said, it was just going to suffer.

Without realizing, she took a step forward. The flashlight shook but remained on the BOW. She stopped at the edge of the grimy blood puddle.

The BOW’s head shifted, that singular inhuman eye locking onto hers. It rested in a skeletal face, sunken deep in a grey eye socket. Underneath the filthy hair she could see an equally filthy beard.

A boy. A man. He, not it.

Her grip on the bat relaxed and she began to cry again. Her flashlight traveled up to his face and his breathing harshened, eye shutting tightly.

“Sorry,” Ally whispered with a hiccup, and moved the beam away.

There was a faint _tick tick_ and, slowly, the chains began to relax until they returned to their original position, holding the BOW tight but no longer crushing him. Ally swore she heard him sigh in relief.

She took a calming breath in the heavy air. “H-hello?”

His red eye opened and regarded her.

“Hello,” she tried again, “My name’s Ally. Can you talk?”

The eye slid shut and the BOW’s harsh panting slowed.

The rats began to advance.

“No!” Ally hissed at them, waving the light in their direction. They fled, but she wondered how long that would last. If this poor creature was their food source they were not going to stay away. Even if they left her alone, as soon as she was gone the BOW was at their mercy.

She didn’t know what to do.

Taking one step into the dried blood and grime, Ally squat down and took a closer look at her monster, more confident now that he couldn’t reach her even if he did try to attack.

Nobody came down here, not for as long as Ally could recall. The hallway was dusty and there were no footprints save her own, so this BOW hadn’t been put down here anytime recently. But if he’d been here for years and years then he should be dead; even zombies eventually couldn’t hold themselves together any longer and just rotted away.

Even relaxed the chains sunk too deep into his sides, flesh and bone worn down after a long time of pressure. That made Ally frown and she leaned forward, risking a closer look at his face. She’d only seen one eye thus far, and now she could see why.

Half his face had sunken in itself, pressed against the floor so long it was now deformed. Not just his face, but his shoulders sat awkwardly, the bones settled so that the lower half caved in and pressed upward while the shoulders and ribs above surrendered to gravity. He could barely breathe.

Ally could see this easily through his paper thin skin, his muscles long atrophied.

This was a bloody skeleton wrapped in paper mache skin feeding a colony of rats, sinking in on itself. Alive and awake for all of it.

Ally swallowed, her throat thick.

This was wrong.

“I’m gonna help you,” Ally whispered and then stood, shining her light all along the walls of the cell, searching. “There’s gotta be a switch for the chains somewhere, right?”

The red eye followed her, but the BOW did not move his head as she walked along the wall, checking every shadow and shape. There was nothing.

“You’re not just chained down, there’s a mecha…mechan… a machine under the floor, so there’s gotta be a way to turn that off,” she insisted to herself, even as doubt wormed into her chest. Was it by the door?

Of course! If they were releasing a monster they wouldn’t do it standing inside the room with it. She hurried back into the hall and started searching again. Where was it? Was it a big switch labeled release or something small she was missing?

There! A switch next to the keypad, the lettering worn away. Maybe that was it.

Ally reached for the switch and then hesitated. Should she be doing this? There were people upstairs, there was her daddy.

There was a man in that cell. In pain, being eaten alive.

She shut the large door until it sealed and relocked, just in case, and then threw the switch.

Nothing happened. No sound, no roaring triumph of a newly released monster. Unlocking the door again she peeked in, her flashlight landing on the bloody pile of BOW on the floor. The chains were still there. She toggled the switch and still nothing happened. She tried punching the combination before flipping the switch with no better luck. There were no other switches or buttons or anything.

Ally sniffled, tears and snot dampening the scarf around her face, and slammed her hand on the keypad.

“Let him go!” she yelled, and it echoed sharply down the hall. She winced.

Dejected, she went back into the cell and resumed her squat by the trapped BOW.

“I’m sorry,” she sniveled, “I tried, but I don’t know how to undo the chains.”

The single reptilian eye regarded her a moment and then slid shut.

Ally risked pulling the scarf down to wipe her nose on her sleeve. Now what?

She shifted and sticky blood and crunchy rat dropping ground under her boot. It was disgusting, and this poor man could do nothing but lie in it. And how could she help him if the cell was so gross she couldn’t even sit down?

“Mr. BOW?” she whispered, and waited until the eye wearily opened, “Can you talk? Can you understand me? Blink two times for yes.”

The BOW just stared.

Ally sighed. What could she expect? She felt the need to explain herself anyway. “I need to go now, but I’m gonna come back. I’m gonna come back and try to help you somehow, okay?”

She stood and the red eye followed, and then the monster tensed under the chains and they strained.

“No, no no no, you stay there, don’t hurt yourself. I’ll come back, I will.”

The BOW let out a slow, rattled breath.

“I’ll be back, I promise,” she said, and then backed out of the room. She shut the door but didn’t seal it and walked away. It felt wrong now, like she was a horrible person for leaving him, because now she knew about the rats.

When she started to cry again she ran the rest of the way back up.

* * *

Ally climbed into the passenger seat of her dad’s car and sat quietly as they drove home.

“Something wrong, pumpkin?”

“What?”

Her dad glanced at her before his eyes returned to the road, “You’re really quiet today. Normally you’re messing with the radio.”

“Oh. Homework was hard.”

“That all?”

She hesitated, and he continued, “I hated schoolwork too, and it all seems like stupid busywork that you’ll never need, but when you get older it starts to make more sense. You might never need what you’re doing, but it makes the groundwork for things you may need later, or the shortcuts you’ll use or… What I mean is, your mom and I want you to do well so you’ll be ready when you’re older, okay? We aren’t trying to be mean. But as long as you do your best I’ll be proud of you.”

“Daddy.”

“Yeah?”

_There’s a monster in the basement, it’s horrible and scary but in pain and I don’t know what to do._

“I didn’t finish my math, will you help me?”

“Of course, sweetheart. But after dinner, I’ve got some work left myself.”

Good, that gave her time to make it look like she started it at all.


	4. Blink Twice

Ally was never going to get used to that smell. She coughed and gagged as she pushed the large cell door open, awkwardly stepping through as the push broom caught on it and the frame. The scurrying of rats sent shivers up her spine.

While the company robots did most of the floor scrubbing, there was still normal maintenance and janitorial work to be done and so Ally had planned to raid the supplies for a broom. She reconsidered as she realized that whatever she took was not going to come back; that cell was just too disgusting. Fortunately, shoved away in a closet on the first basement level was a push broom and a mop and other abandoned cleaning things. Nobody should miss those if she burned them after cleaning up this nasty pit, or tossed them into a neighboring cell forever.

“Hello, Mr. BOW,” she whispered, being careful not to shine her flashlight in the creature’s face.

A glowing eye was her response, though it extinguished soon after he saw her. Did he recognize her?

“I brought some stuff for you,” she unslung her backpack and set it on the floor by the door where it wasn’t damp and disgusting, “and I’m gonna get some of that rat poop out of your face,” she lifted the broom.

It was very slight, she almost missed it, but he flinched when she lifted the broom. She immediately lowered it.

“No, no, I’m not gonna hurt you, it’s okay,” she set the broom down and slowly moved closer before squatting down in front of him. “Can you understand me? You look human. I’ve never seen a BOW like that. Did Umbrella make you?”

He stared back but made no attempt at a response. It made Ally sad, if not uncomfortable. Was this BOW once human? And if so, why was he never cured, or reintegrated in some way? He didn’t look far gone.

Was he actually forgotten down here? Had to be, why would the BSAA purposefully leave something so close to human down here to rot? It made Ally’s stomach churn.

She swallowed. “I’m Ally,” she tried again, “what’s your name?”

He shuddered, making the chains clink, then settled.

“Were you a BSAA agent who got infected?” dread filled her with that idea. Never would anyone do something this cruel to one of their own... “I tried looking your type up but I couldn’t find anything on the normal BOW servers.”

There were databases on the internet specifically designed for civilians to look up specific viruses and BOW in case of the need to report an outbreak or monster sighting. Back before she was born, when outbreaks had been really bad, having information available for everyday people helped prevent the spread and streamlined reporting. Of course, everyone knew those servers didn’t have everything and Ally was going to need to access the secret stuff for information on her forgotten BOW.

Ally shrugged, “That’s okay, you just relax and I’m gonna clean up. It stinks in here. Do you even notice that anymore?”

She went back to her bag and pulled out a battery-powered lamp she borrowed from the emergency kit her mom stored in the hallway closet. She turned it on and set it on the floor, turning off the flashlight.

“Now I can work.”

She also pulled out a hand towel folded over several times and approached the BOW, holding it out so he could see. His eye glowed and he panted out a wet rasp.

“I’m gonna put it under your head, it’s softer than the floor. Come on, lift your head.”

He tensed and then spasmed in a lunge, a rattling cough ripped from his mouth as she got too close before the chains activated and painfully tore him back down. Ally backed away.

“Okay, okay, I’ll stay over here.”

Forgetting the towel idea for now, Ally picked up the broom and went to work. She started at the farthest point on the puddle where it was thinnest, pushing the broom into the grime and shoving it towards the wall. The BOW’s eye would glow whenever she got too close or moved too quickly, but even that eventually died down. Ally didn’t know if it was because he got used to it or if he just exhausted himself.

She thought to push all the rat droppings and blood and who knows what else against the wall where the rats came out, blocking them from entering, but when she got too close they hissed and a couple even lunged, their own eyes glowing red. She decided to leave the piles close to but not quite up against the wall for now.

She needed to figured out a way to get it out of the cell, though. It was so gross.

“Gross, gross, ew, gross...” she muttered as she pushed the sticky stuff. She flipped the broom and used the wooden head to scrape the real tough stuff from the floor.

It wasn’t very hard work, but the smell became noxious as she stirred up the waste and soon she was gagging again. She stopped and leaned the broom against the wall along with the mop and bucket. It dawned on her she was going to have to fill that on the upper basement levels and carry it down, but she’d worry about that when she got most of the literal crap off the floor.

There was now a ring on the floor encircling the trapped BOW, scraped clear but nowhere near clean. At this rate it was going to take a while to get it less disgusting in the cell, but it wasn’t like the BOW was going anywhere, and she still needed to look up what he even was.

She returned to her backpack and pulled out a large, flat pad, wrapped in taped plastic bags. Ally made it not long ago with her mom when they all went camping and she discovered the hard way that when out in the woods the benches and tables had a tendency to be damp. A piece of cardboard wrapped in foam and plastic bags made a nice portable seat. She dropped it onto the scraped part of the floor and sat down, keeping her boots off of the pad, and faced her BOW.

She tapped at her chin in the way of scientists and intellectuals in the movies as she regarded him. “I’m thinking Tyrant class, those could look pretty human sometimes. But that’s old stuff; if anyone bothers to make a BOW anymore they do way weirder.”

The BOW stared at her.

“I always thought we should put together like...the BOW Olympics. Who can make the craziest monster who can do the best stuff. Then everyone gets their stupid mad scientist out of their system _and_ get famous for it without hurting anybody or setting off a war. I mean nobody does it like that now, not for a while. People tend to notice fifty foot monsters running around and the BSAA goes and gets them.

“My family’s been in the BSAA a long time, but no scientists or virologists or anything. Grandma and Grandpa used to fight monsters, they’re really brave and cool. My mom’s a manager at the supermarket, but my dad’s BSAA. He does...” she paused. Come to think of it she wasn’t exactly sure what her dad did. “He sits at the computer and talks on the phone a lot. But I hate talking on phones, you can’t see who you’re talking to, right? So I guess that’s brave.”

She leaned a little closer to the BOW and his eye seemed to sharpen on her. She put a hand to the side of her mouth, like she was passing him a secret, and whispered, “I don’t even think he knows the people he’s talking to. How’s scary is that?”

The BOW blinked, slowly.

Ally tapped at her chin again, swerving herself back on the path of her original thought from which she’d wandered. “I don’t think you’re a Tyrant though, because that would mean one of the T-virus strains, and I don’t even think those are around anymore.” Probably a sample locked away in a super secret lab somewhere though.

“Still,” she mused, “Mr. Tyrant sounds cooler than Mr. BOW. Which do you like?”

The BOW sighed and shut his eye.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be boring. Boring Mr. BOW.” Ally reached back and dragged the lamp a bit closer, keeping it on her far side from the BOW so it didn’t hurt his eye. Watching him struggle to breathe sobered her and she lost interest in babbling.

“You must be hurting so bad,” she whispered, looking at the heavy chains and weepings wounds all over his emaciated body, “Maybe it’s a good thing you can’t understand me, because that means you can’t think, not like a person."

She didn’t speak again, just sat quietly. The man-creature didn’t open his eye and she assumed he was asleep. She’d never spent this long in here with him, and while he was still horrifying to look at she wasn’t afraid anymore. The rats poked their heads out but had yet to get close.

So long as she was here, that was a little bit of time her BOW wasn’t being food for rats, a little bit of time he could rest somewhat easier, maybe.

It wasn’t much, but she could give him that.

Eventually her phone’s time-to-head-back-up alarm dinged and she got up and grabbed her bag. The pad and the lamp she left by the door, the towel folded on top.

“I’ll see you later, Mr. BOW.”

The man’s eye opened partially and watched her leave.

* * *

“Gross,” Ally grunted as she shoved another pile of waste and dried blood across the floor with the broom, “gross, gross, ew, ew, _ew!_ What is that?!”

Rat bones, old ones if she had a guess. A whole lot of them.

She’d managed to sweep closer to her BOW, taking on the thick, crunchy puddle, with very little reaction from him. After several visits sweeping and babbling at him, he seemed to accept her presence and didn’t struggle or pant-snarl at her when she got too close. She attempted to put the towel under his head again but that still got her the glowing eyes and tenseness. She could get close, but nowhere near touching him.

Pulling a face that she was certain would never stick that way, no matter what her grandpa said, Ally dug in and pushed the crumbly rat bones away. Something happened in this cell and a whole lot of rats died a long time ago. She shuddered.

“Was this from when you were put in here?” she asked the BOW.

He was awake but not watching her at the moment.

“Bad Mr. BOW,” she chided with a giggle. Like she cared if he killed some rats.

Ally paused to gag. She learned that if she allowed herself to choke out some of the bad air she was able to tolerate the stench a bit better, even as she shoveled rat dung around. Rat dung and now dead rat. Ally sighed at that. She may be a kid but even she could realize the stupidity of her situation.

She could be outside playing. She could even be upstairs making another scary abandoned lab video. But here she was, sweeping up decayed rat remains and BOW blood and who knows what else.

She really wanted to avoid homework, apparently.

Some rats were getting a bit bold and coming out of the wall, so she started to hum. They were wary of her, but really didn’t like when she made noise, and so disappeared back into their holes.

“Mr. BOW, Mr. BOW,” she sing-songed, “Mr. BOW-wow, bow-wowser...” she stopped and grinned to herself. "How about that?” she asked the man on the floor, “I’ll call you Bowser!”

She heard a weird chuff noise but otherwise her BOW didn’t react.

Deciding she was done for the day, Ally put aside the broom and dropped the seat pad onto the floor. She moved a bit closer to her monster every time she visited.

“It’s from some old video games. I used to play with my dad’s console. I play with Emily’s system sometimes when I’m at her place –Emily’s a friend from school- but I don’t have any new games myself. Did you play games when you were human? I’m pretty sure you were human once. Why would anyone make a BOW from scratch just to make it like a human?”

The BOW watched her, his single eye unwavering. She frowned.

“Can you understand me? Blink two times for yes,” she said, her voice tense.

He just stared.

* * *

The bat finally came in use.

Nearly two weeks passed before Ally was able to go into the basement again. Both her grandparents were home and she happily spent her free afternoons at their house, showing off her videos of over-dramatic exploration of the woods behind her house, pretending to be stalked by a ferocious creature. In the end it was revealed to be the neighbors schnauzer. Her grandfather loved it.

Both dread and elation filled Ally as she entered the corridor on the bottom-most level. She wanted to check on her BOW but she really wasn't thrilled to go back into that nasty cell. She shoved open the door and waved her flashlight around to chase away the rats. Most fled.

A very large, very angry rat stayed right where it was on the BOW’s head and hissed at her, its beady eyes vermilion in the dark.

“Shoo!” Ally said, her voice hushed but still over-loud in the dark space, waving the flashlight at it.

The rat hissed again but decided that, aside from the blinding light, Ally was no threat and went back to what it had been doing before she entered. Back hunched, it dove between the matted hair to the BOW’s face and sank its teeth into the papery skin stretched around the eye-socket, gnawing along the bone’s edge to expose the eye.

The eye that lolled about in pained acceptance, until it saw the light, tracked it back to Ally, then locked on her. It glowed, but it wasn’t in anger or fear.

She was moving before she understood it. Her backpack hit the floor with a thud and she was grabbing the bat resting against the wall, running across the short distance between the door and her monster. She swung, the rat nothing more than a wiffle ball on a batting tee in her mind, and felt satisfaction as she felt the snap of tiny bones through the bat as it struck the rat and flung it to a far wall of the cell. She heard the crackling splat and plop as it hit the wall and fell to the floor.

She whirled towards the remaining rats and lifted the bat, “Go away!” she yelled, as if they could understand, “This is _my_ BOW!”

And perhaps they did. They retreated back into the walls and disappeared.

She knew they’d come back as soon as she left, but as long as she was here, they’d stay away. At least for now.

She squat down in front of the creature and sniffled. Blood seeped from the wounds into his eye and he was trembling.

“I’m sorry, Bowser. Are you okay?” Without thinking she reached out to touch him.

The chains rattled as he flinched, trying to move away from her. She quickly pulled back before he set off the restraint system.

With a sigh, Ally swapped the flashlight for the lamp and started cleaning. The bristles of the broom scraped against the floor and the chains tinked as the BOW didn’t settle and continued to shake.

* * *

Ally hoped she was being sneaky but as she accidentally knocked the box of dry floor wipes off the shelf she knew she was caught. Sure enough, her mom appeared in the laundry room doorway.

“What are you doing?”

“I...I need some garbage bags and gloves,” Ally said, holding up said items as proof.

“Why?”

“School project.”

“What about?” Her mother wasn’t suspicious, just curious about the goings-on of Ally’s school life. Normally Ally liked that but not when she was trying to get things to clean up the cell of a secret locked away BOW in the basement. Also curiousness could quickly turn to suspicion if Ally wasn’t careful.

“Well...not a school project, but we’re learning about cleaning up the environment so we’re gonna clean up around the school and collect garbage and stuff.”

“Oh, alright. I don’t know why they aren’t supplying the bags themselves—“

“We gotta do our part!”

“Yes, that’s good, but next time just ask, please. I need to keep track of what we have.”

“Yes, mom, sorry.”

* * *

Armed with gloves, a face mask underneath her scarf, a trowel, and a bandanna to keep her hair back, Ally shoveled the piles of crap and blood into the garbage bag. When done, she dragged it out of the cell and into one of the neighboring ones where she tossed it into a corner. The gloves were discarded on top afterwards.

“Eau de rat poop and BOW,” she muttered as she shut the door to the next cell and returned to her monster. She was tired and sat on her seat pad, deciding she could start mopping next time. “We could sell in it New York, make millions,” she giggled, “First perfume, and then...the world!”

He didn’t look amused, but then he never looked amused. In fact, Ally was certain he was ignoring her right now, his eyes mostly shut and his blackened tongue partially hanging out of his bloody mouth.

“You’re pretty gross too, and you smell. If you got a bath would you freak out like my grandpa’s dog? Grandpa had a dog when I was really little, it was old though and it died. It would romp around in puddles and mud all day but put him in the bathtub and he acted like Grandpa was trying to murder him.”

The BOW’s eye shut and she was pretty sure he was dozing off. She slipped out her phone and started recording him, not for identification, but just because.

“This is Bowser,” she narrated, zooming in on his wrecked face, “at least that’s what I’m calling him for now. He’s my BOW, and someday I’m gonna get him out of here.”

* * *

Ally tapped the stylus pen against the school tablet impatiently. She was sitting with her father in his office, spread out on the floor, forcing herself through her work. She had to keep her grades steady, otherwise her parents would try another tactic to get her to do her homework and she wouldn’t be able to come to her father’s office, so now and again she made herself do her schoolwork first before she visited her BOW. It made it very hard to focus.

“You doing alright, sweetheart?” her dad asked, not looking away from his computer.

“I hate math.”

“Everyone hates math. What are you stuck on?”

“Everything!”

“Bring it over and I’ll take a look at it. How about burgers when I’m done here? We can hit the drive-thru on the way home.”

“What about dinner?”

“Just got a text from your mom. She’s gonna work late today so it’s just you and me tonight.”

“Burgers!”

“Homework first.”

“Blech!”

“Stop being dramatic. Bring it over.”

She wasn’t going to be able to visit Bowser today and felt a horrible pang in her gut at the thought of rats crawling all over him. She almost didn’t enjoy her dinner.

* * *

Mopping didn’t seem to be doing anything but making the floor wet and stirring the blood around, but she kept at it anyway. Maybe it would take a few tries and she was never going to not use her seat pad anyway.

Moreover, she felt very unnerved, had since she entered the cell today. She greeted her BOW like normal and something about him knocked her off balance and she didn't like it. Even now every time she looked at him there was something different.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, sloshing the bloody mop in the full bucket that had been an absolute pain to bring down, “Don’t like mops? Or are you mad I’m cleaning your nice home?”

He was looking right at her, into her.

Focused.

The realization was like a physical blow and she dropped the mop, hurrying over to him and squatting down, staring into that one inhuman eye.

Her voice shook, “Can you understand me? Blink two times for yes.”

Slowly, the eye blinked once, and then again.

Cold gripped Ally’s gut even as heat flushed into her face. It could be a fluke.

“Do it again.”

One blink, and then another.

Ally was shaking all over.

“H-hello, I’m Ally.”

The BOW shifted, tilted his head, and nodded.


End file.
